Andrew MacKay: I return to President Obama's highly significant speech in Cairo this morning. Bearing in mind that our country is still probably America's closest ally and has huge interests in the middle east and given that the Leader of the House has said that the topical debate for Thursday has not yet been decided, may I suggest that there could not be anything more topical than a debate on the middle east, particularly in view of the American President's speech, and that it should be led by the Foreign Secretary, if he available?

Robert Goodwill: On 27 April, the new motorcycle driving test, including the controversial 50 kph swerve and stop aspect—was finally introduced. During the first three weeks of the test's operation, there have been 11 incidents—10 involving injury—and three people have had to be admitted to hospital. Will the Secretary of State for Transport, whoever he or she may be by next week, make a statement so that Members can raise the questions that need to be asked about this particular disturbing problem?

Greg Hands: I think the Minister said he was worried about whether businesses would be able to meet their obligations to pay national insurance. Will he therefore tell us why he is hiking national insurance up by 0.5 per cent? from next year, for employers and those employees earning more than £19,000—a tax on the many, not the few?

John Hutton: I beg to move,
	That this House has considered the matter of defence in the world.
	I am delighted to open this afternoon's debate on defence in the world. Today more than 17,000 of our armed forces personnel are deployed around the globe, protecting our national interests and working with our international partners in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, the south Atlantic, Gibraltar, Nepal, Canada, Belize, Kenya and Cyprus. I know that all Members of the House will wish to join me once again in paying tribute to the contribution that each and every member of our armed forces makes to build a safer world on our behalf, and in acknowledging the sacrifices that they all make in doing so. They are truly outstanding individuals, and the whole country can be rightly proud of their professionalism and dedication to duty.
	It is right that, sadly, I should begin by offering my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Cyrus Thatcher, of 2nd Battalion the Rifles, who was killed on active service in Afghanistan this week. We mourn his loss and extend our deepest sympathy to his family.
	In April, I had the honour of attending the ceremony to mark the successful completion of British combat missions in Basra. It was, for me and many others, a deeply moving occasion. Our armed forces have achieved a huge amount in the past six years, including a transformed security situation in Basra and an increasingly capable Iraqi police force and army. Furthermore, they have helped to create a secure environment in which Iraq's new democracy can grow. After years of oppression by Saddam Hussein, southern Iraq now has the opportunity to fulfil its very considerable economic potential.
	The task was not achieved without sacrifice. The House will, I know, also join me today in paying tribute to the 179 British armed forces personnel who lost their lives in Iraq. We and the Iraqi people owe them a debt that we can never repay, and that is why we must honour their memory and care for their families. I am in no doubt at all that we have left Iraq a better place, and that we have made a real difference to the lives of its citizens. According to General Odierno, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, what the British armed forces have achieved in Basra and elsewhere in Iraq is "nothing short of brilliant".
	Operation Telic was not the beginning of our involvement in Iraq; this week, the Royal Air Force concluded almost 19 years of operations in the skies above the country. Whether it was strike missions during the wars in 1991 and 2003 and the protection of the Shi'a of the south and the Kurds of the north from the malevolence and violence of Saddam's regime, or the provision of support to ground forces and the playing of a vital logistics role over the past six years, the Royal Air Force has a proud record, in the finest traditions of that service.
	The combat mission in Basra was not the beginning of the UK's role in Iraq, and nor does its conclusion mark its end. As part of a broadly-based relationship between the UK and Iraq, we are now making the transition to a different, but close, bilateral defence relationship. As the Prime Minister told the House in December, our future military role will focus on continuing protection of Iraq's oil platforms in the northern Gulf, together with training of the Iraqi navy and marines, and officers of the Iraqi armed forces more broadly. We are preparing to lead an officer training initiative as part of the NATO training mission in Iraq, but that, of course, will be subject to NATO reaching its own agreement with the Government of Iraq.
	In the meantime, as our current permissions for operational and training activities expired on 31 May, we have paused in our support to the Iraqi military in Iraq, pending ratification of the new agreement. However, our programme of training for Iraqi service personnel on military courses in the UK continues and is expanding. I very much welcome the Iraqi Council of Ministers' endorsement on Tuesday of a draft UK-Iraq training and maritime support agreement. Once that has been signed, which I hope will happen shortly, I will place a copy of it in the Library of the House in parallel with its presentation to the Iraqi Council of Representatives.
	As our relationship with Iraq enters a new phase, the main focus of operations will naturally shift to Afghanistan. As the Prime Minister has said, Afghanistan and Pakistan are of critical strategic importance to the United Kingdom and the international community as a whole. In December 2007, we set out a comprehensive approach to tackling the insurgency in Afghanistan. Building on that, in April this year the Government published our approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
	The 9/11 attacks demonstrated overwhelmingly the international terrorist threat posed from Afghanistan. We must never forget that that country was allowed to become a base for al-Qaeda to plan terrorist operations across the world.

John Hutton: I share some thinking in common with the hon. Gentleman. The conflict prevention pool is a useful innovation, and it is proving to be a useful source of resources, helping us to do some of the work in Afghanistan, for example. Have we got every nook and cranny of the policy right? Probably not. There is also the question of how much we are prepared to invest in such initiatives, which is a wider matter on which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor expresses his views from time to time. However, I think that we have the beginnings of a much better approach. It needs to develop and—let us be honest—it could probably do with more resources as well. However, there will be an opportunity to look at such issues in future spending rounds, and I very much hope that it is taken. By the way, I should also inform the hon. Gentleman that I have not finished talking about resources—I am coming back to that subject.
	We will always, rightly, look to NATO for collective defence, but I believe strongly that the European Union can play its part too, using armed forces alongside its civilian capabilities. That is not about duplicating what NATO can do. Indeed, the real problem is that European countries have too few defence capabilities, not too many. I want to see Europeans developing more capability that they can put at the service of NATO or the European Union. I want to see Europeans taking more responsibility for solving the world's problems, whether through NATO or the European Union. I also want the European Union to show what it can do when it focuses on outcomes rather than institutions, as it has done in countering piracy in the gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia, for example.
	In sum, we need organisations that can respond, recognise the nature of a risk when it appears, think rapidly and imaginatively across boundaries, flex resources to where they are needed and work in partnership to implement solutions. I hope that we can leave behind the old yah-boo anti-Europeanism that has bedevilled debates on the subject in the past, because it does not advance our national security interests. Instead, it hinders them.
	As for our capability, I would mention just two emerging priorities. We will need to build and maintain an advantage over our adversaries in information and decision making. Advanced forms of collection, including through unmanned aerial vehicles, should be integrated in our forces and not just seen as an additional luxury. We will also need to develop capabilities that protect our information networks from increasingly sophisticated attacks. Such non-kinetic attacks on our vital infrastructure from cyberspace are clearly attractive to our adversaries, and we have got to counter them. How we decide on the appropriate capabilities and how we acquire them on time and on budget will be vital to the success of our armed forces in defeating the threats that we now face and might face in future.
	Today we do not just have to plan for contingent threats against a sophisticated state adversary, where the practical implications of our planning assumptions are tested in large part by their deterrence effect. As the past decade has instead proved, today our armed forces are engaged in less conventional, counter-insurgency and peace enforcement operations in defence of our national security, so now our planning assumptions are tested in the heat of battle, with no room for delay or failure. Every one of our servicemen and women has the right to know that we are doing everything possible to ensure that every pound of investment in our equipment programme goes towards the front line and is not wasted in inefficient or weak processes of acquisition.
	That is why I asked Bernard Gray in December last year to conduct a detailed examination of progress in implementing the MOD's acquisition change programme, as I hope right hon. and hon. Members will recall. I have to be satisfied that the current programme of change is sufficient to meet the challenges of the new combat environment that we now face. To date, I am not. I expect to receive the report shortly. Bernard Gray has conducted a thorough and wide-ranging analysis. I am confident that when his report is published, it will be both honest about the scale of the task that confronts us and clear in describing a detailed and radical blueprint to reform the process of acquisition in the MOD from top to bottom. That is something that we must get right. There can be no room for complacency, and given the current tempo of operations, we have no choice but to act with urgency. I will publish Bernard Gray's report before the summer recess, and I will come to the House again to outline the Government's response to it.
	Given the size of the challenge that we face, I am in no doubt whatever that change must happen and that it must be radical. There must be changes to the system and structure of acquisition process, changes to the incentives that drive and determine behaviours—behaviours that have often lead to waste, delay and efficiency, bedevilling the efforts of both Labour and Conservative Governments over a long period—and changes to the skills sets of those involved in acquisition. I am committed to doing everything that I can to make it possible for our armed forces to be better served, and I will make future announcements in due course.
	Most members of today's armed forces joined after 9/11, in the new security environment that it created. That is the context in which they have always experienced operations. Their language is that of counter-insurgency and their primary enemy is the terrorist in civilian clothing, indistinguishable from the civilians he mingles with—the terrorist who threatens not just our people, but our friends and allies across the world. Our edge in defeating that threat is acquired in the training that our people receive and the equipment that they use, which is second to none, backed up by satellite bandwidth or a UAV controlled from thousands of miles away. We must ensure that our policies, systems and capabilities reflect today's realities, so that those who serve today are given the best support possible. However, we will fail those who will serve us in years to come if we fail to plan now for tomorrow's emerging threats. I will not allow that to happen.

Liam Fox: No, I will not.
	It says everything about the priorities of the current Government and their business managers that the annual debate on defence in the world is squeezed by a topical debate, on a day when they knew that most MPs would be away from the House. I can just hear the Government business managers asking, "What subject is so unimportant that we can stick it in the Commons on polling day for the European and local elections?" and the answer coming back, "Why not defence in the world? It's only about Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest—nothing terribly important." It leaves most of us on the Conservative Benches virtually speechless that a debate of such importance to our national interest, the well-being of our armed forces and the morale of their families should have its annual slot reduced to less than four hours.
	In the year since we last held this debate the world has become a more, not less, dangerous place. Nine thousand British troops in Afghanistan are engaged in some of the heaviest fighting since the Korean war. As our ground troops come home from Iraq, the mission of the Royal Navy is now in question because the Government have failed to secure a legal mandate with Baghdad. Russia is rearming, and still occupying Abkhazia and South Ossetia—with illegitimate elections recently having been held in the latter—and it has threatened to militarise the Arctic region, to the great concern of our close allies in NATO, especially Norway and Canada.
	Piracy is running rife, not only off the horn of Africa but in less mentioned places such as the gulf of Guinea and the strait of Molucca. NATO is struggling to find its way in the 21st century, and the EU is aiming to increase its defence integration. Iran, in an unprecedented move, recently deployed six warships to the gulf of Aden, is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon, and in eight days' time will hold presidential elections that will have a huge impact on future policy.
	The Taliban were recently operating within 60 miles of Islamabad, and as I speak, Pakistani security forces are heavily engaged in offensive operations across the north west frontier and the federally administered tribal areas. North Korea has tested its second nuclear bomb, is preparing another long-range missile test, and has torn up the armistice that brought an end to the 1950-1953 Korean war.
	The British armed forces are participating in about 50 NATO, EU, United Nations and OSCE operations around the globe, and we have a military presence in the form of 41,000 British troops in 32 countries and overseas territories. It is against that backdrop that the Government have decided to hold a debate on this subject today, meaning that, for obvious reasons, it will be poorly attended in the House and go largely unreported in the press. The real tragedy is that we need more, not less, understanding among the British public of the threats to our wider national security.
	When we think about Operation Telic and the presence of British forces in Iraq, we mainly think about the contribution of our ground forces—and let us make no mistake: the men and women serving in our Army and the Royal Air Force have contributed bravely and professionally to make Iraq a better place. I associate myself with all the Secretary of State's comments about the huge and historic role that they have played in contributing to the future well-being of that country.
	Recently, however, the focus has been placed increasingly on the Royal Navy and the outstanding work that it has been doing in training the Iraqi navy and protecting Iraqi oil platforms. I say "has been doing" because, as has been reported this week and confirmed by the Government, the British and Iraqi Governments have failed to finalise a deal to enable the remaining British forces in Iraq to continue to train their Iraqi counterparts after last Sunday. Consequently, there are about 700 UK soldiers and sailors without a legal mandate in Iraq who are unable to carry out their training mission with the Iraqi navy.
	Furthermore, it is rumoured—I would welcome Government confirmation of this—that at least two British warships have been removed from the combined taskforce 158, which provides security for Iraqi oil platforms and ports in the northern Persian gulf, the economic lifeblood of Iraq that they have been asked to protect. This has forced an additional unexpected and burden on to our allies in the region, who are having to fill the gap. This applies most notably to the Americans, who claim not to have the resources available to meet this requirement. Our Navy has an extremely important role in the Gulf, and it is extremely well respected in the region by our allies. I would say to all those who talk about a lack of respect in the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom that they ought to go and talk to those serving in the American fifth fleet. They would find out just how highly those people regard the Royal Navy and how important its contribution is in that part of the world.
	It is unacceptable to have up to 700 British service personnel without a legal mandate in Iraq, especially when that has a negative impact on our relationship with the US. The Government should have sorted this issue out during President Maliki's recent visit to London in April. At that time, they were upbeat about what might happen, and the Secretary of State has been relatively upbeat today, but we should not really have reached this point, should we?

Nick Harvey: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I suspect we will never know quite why it was, but the discussion that the hon. Member for Woodspring imagined taking place in the Leader of the House's office sounded altogether authentic to my way of thinking.
	Although the debate does, in a sense, mark the end of most of our activity in Iraq, I am sure, and hope very much, that we will regularly debate not only the state of security in that country and the wider region but the progress of economic development—a subject that has been mentioned—so that we can judge over the longer term what the overall impact of the west's involvement there has been. However, our attention now rightly focuses largely on Afghanistan, where our troops are working tirelessly, but where it is widely recognised that we have a long, hard job still to do. There is no prospect, in any way, of a quick fix. The death toll has risen quickly in recent weeks, and the insurgents are constantly employing new and ever more deadly methods, to which we have to find new ways of responding.
	The Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies), who speaks in the House on defence procurement matters, said in response to a question on Monday in this Chamber that more and more equipment was being delivered to the front line, and we have to hope that that is right. In some cases, he did not give many indications of numbers and quantities; I suppose that he might reasonably say that he would not want to broadcast some of that information. However, we still have serious ongoing concerns, both about the provision of armoured vehicles—I readily acknowledge the significant progress that has been made on that—and about helicopter lift capacity, which will become a real problem the longer the engagement goes on in Afghanistan.
	I think that it was the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) who tabled a question some months ago about the likely availability of helicopters in years to come, as existing helicopters go out of commission. Making even the most optimistic assumptions about the in-service date for new helicopters that will follow, one can see that there are serious problems coming up in the next few years. I still do not feel that we have heard any adequate response from the Government on how we will get our helicopter lift capacity up to that which the troops need in Afghanistan. I welcome initiatives such as the one that the Government undertook with the French Government to try to boost the availability of helicopters at a European level, but thus far, I do not think that it has yielded much. I hope that they will stick at it, though, and I hope that more NATO countries will provide helicopters for the operation. However, the last time I saw an answer on the subject, only three had been committed; they were from the Czech Republic.
	The lack of helicopter capacity is becoming a big issue. People have been going on about it for a long time, but I just do not feel that a response commensurate to the challenge has been forthcoming. I know that we await decisions on some routine procurements, whether they be from AgustaWestland or whoever, but I wonder whether the sheer scale of the problem will require interim solutions to be found, even if ultimately longer-term solutions will point in a different direction. There is an availability of helicopters, although they are possibly not of the sort of capability that we would ideally want in the helicopters that we will build and develop in the long term. However, there are short-term solutions, if the Government are willing to consider them.
	It has already been said in this debate that any consideration of Afghanistan increasingly needs to take into account the situation in Pakistan. Obviously, the Americans have done that by appointing a single envoy to deal with both problems. There are very worrying developments that should cause us all concern. The unstable state in Pakistan is greatly worrying. Although its Government's forces have hit back seemingly quite effectively recently, the underlying problems are there for all to see. Also, increasingly reports are coming through of Taliban elements in Afghanistan and Pakistan coming together—up to now they have had certain tensions, and there have been difficulties between them—because they recognise that they have a new challenge to face, particularly as America is committing more troops to Afghanistan. It is hard to predict or sense exactly how that will play out on the ground, but it raises the point that, as far as quite authoritative reports would have us believe, the Pakistan intelligence agency had, for good or ill, been providing resources to the Afghanistan elements of the Taliban in anticipation of having to deal with them at some point after the west had completed its operations in Afghanistan. Those elements are now cosying up to the Pakistan Taliban, so we end up with the possibility—by no means unprecedented—that the Pakistani military will find itself confronting an enemy to whom it has contributed arms and equipment. That, I hope, will at the very least give it pause for thought in terms of the future, because there is a self-perpetuating cycle in the region, whereby funds that are given for one purpose end up having a completely different and unanticipated impact.
	The spill-over between the two countries is potentially difficult, because to date NATO's Afghanistan operation has relied very much on safe and easy routes through Pakistan and on the resolute support of Pakistan. The question of whether in the future we will be able to count on that to anything like the same degree worries me considerably.
	I, like the official Opposition's Front-Bench team, have said in previous defence debates that there is a long overdue need for a strategic defence review. It remains a mystery to me why the Government, uniquely, do not seem to think it necessary. We know that the Ministry of Defence is under intense budgetary pressure: there is, by anyone's reckoning, a black hole in its budget; we regularly discuss in the House the impact of overstretch and ongoing operations; and we know that the difficulties, needs and demands on the defence budget will increase inexorably year on year. However, we know also that, in the wake of the economic crisis, the next Government will have a major task on their hands to try to control public expenditure in such a fashion that restores some equilibrium to the nation's finances. They will have to take some immensely difficult decisions, balancing the different demands on the public purse which will come from the different Departments. In that context, in particular, a strategic defence review is absolutely fundamental and necessary.
	We have to ask the basic question, what does the nation expect its armed forces to do in the years to come and how can we achieve that? The question has also to be asked, are we all still of the view, as I am, that we should continue the task set out in the previous strategic defence review of acting as a force for good throughout the world? Some have called it liberal interventionism, and if the answer is yes, that we are, what are its implications for manpower, equipment and expenditure? If those of us who believe that we should remain willing to play such a part want to take the public with us and convince them that, in the climate that I have described, painful and difficult choices have to be made between competing demands on the public purse, the only way in which we can hope to do so is by having a major national debate about the armed forces' role and the resources that should be made available to them. The only sensible way to go about that is through a Government-conducted defence review, and I very much hope that, whatever Government are in power after the election, which cannot be far away, they will see that, if we want to continue to play such a part, we need to take the public with us.

James Arbuthnot: That is the current Chinese attitude. I suspect that as China's requirements for more and more resources grow, in order to satisfy a growing middle class in China, the Chinese will begin to need to make more inroads into other countries, not just in that region, but in places such as Africa. The issue that the hon. Lady raises is certainly something of which that we need to be strongly aware. I know that she has expressed an interest in it on the Defence Committee, and I hope that she will continue to do so, because it is a matter of great importance.
	So far I have been talking about things that we are able to see already. Ten years ago we would not have been able to foresee any of them—except, perhaps, those to do with China. What will be happening in 10 years' time that we cannot now foresee? Are we prepared now to have a defence budget and a defence stance that will be completely unable to cope with the unforeseen in 10 years' time?
	I believe that defence is at a watershed. There are fundamental structural flaws in the Ministry of Defence, at a time when the Army is down to fewer than 100,000 and people are no longer sure what equipment can be bought. There are huge internal battles for survival, for supremacy and for equipment between the different services, and with the civil service. There appears to be no cohesive view to show to the world, or even internally, within the Ministry of Defence. There is a budget that has been weakened over decades by war and by underfunding.
	At the end of the cold war, we saw two changes. First, nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction stopped being as effective as they had previously been, so we should then have spent more, not less, on conventional arms. Secondly, the world became less stable, rather than more stable. Again, we should therefore have spent more, rather than less.  [ Interruption. ] I will give way to the Minister if he wants to intervene. No, he does not. So, we took the peace dividend, and that was a serious mistake. If the Minister is hinting, by his gestures from a sedentary position, that it was the Conservatives who took that peace dividend, I can assure him that we were whipped on by the Labour party every step of the way. Everybody in the western world was saying, "Thank heavens, we can spend less on equipment," and it was the Labour party that went into the 1997 election promising to reduce spending on defence to the European average.
	It was a dreadful mistake to take the peace dividend. The result is that there is now a black hole in the defence budget. Things have been made worse recently by the knowledge that there is to be no bad news coming out of defence, and no new money going into defence. A lot of the defence decisions that should have been taken last year or the year before have therefore been postponed until just after the general election. When the pigeons come home to roost, they will discover that there is no roost to come home to.
	There is a strategy in the Ministry of Defence that relies very heavily on the power of new equipment but ignores the quality that comes from quantity. The manpower of the armed forces has therefore been reduced to a level that is close to unsustainable. The hon. Member for North Devon talked about helicopters. The helicopters are going to become much more powerful, but there will be so few of them that they will not be able to be anywhere.

James Arbuthnot: I think that the figure is 9 per cent., but, yes, I believe that it is necessary to have larger armed forces. I am just about to talk about money, but were is the money to come from for that? This is a serious issue that the country—not just the Government, the Opposition and politicians—has to face.
	We are relying heavily on more and more powerful equipment, but we are still losing the capacity to act alongside our closest ally, the United States. We have dwindling armed forces and a tiny reserve, and all of this means that there is less and less connection with the people whom the armed forces are protecting, because they do not meet them on a regular basis. I am afraid that the review of the reserve forces appears to be managing the decline of the armed forces rather than inspiring their rebirth. We have a public who do not understand the armed forces or what they are doing, and who therefore do not support defence spending. As a result, there is no money to spend on defence. We have spent the money, for decades ahead, on the banks.

Bob Ainsworth: Yes, but whose law needs to be changed? We have to take these steps while accepting what the Kenyans are prepared to do for us and being enormously grateful to them for their efforts. Let me say, as I said at Question Time, that I have no intention of allowing the Royal Navy to be used as a taxi service for asylum seekers—that will not happen while I am Minister for the Armed Forces and if that means that we have to set people free off the coast of Somalia, we will do so. We will do what we can in the circumstances.
	The hon. Member for North Essex said that he thought our attitude to the American capability on counter-insurgency was arrogant. I do not see that arrogance in our military and I do not believe it exists in the body politic in this country either; there is great respect for the work that was done first by General Petraeus in Iraq and which is now preached by General McChrystal in Afghanistan. Huge leaps have been made in capability and doctrine from the American military. We must recognise that, and we buy into it totally—we need to work alongside them.
	The hon. Gentleman and the Chair of the Defence Committee talked ably about the complexities involved in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and said that much more needed to be done. I do not detract from that at all, but we need to understand that Pakistan is a sovereign nation, it has its own priorities and red lines and it is a very important player in this circumstance. We have to work with the Pakistani Government and not attempt to impose something unacceptable on them.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) is a new member of the Defence Committee, and I thank her very much for her effort and the work that she is putting in on that Committee. She lamented the lack of recognition that there is for our armed forces. I genuinely believe that there has been a phenomenal improvement in that regard over the past couple of years, which is much welcome. It is deeply welcomed by the people at the hard end—those who do the fighting and the dangerous work on our behalf. Sadly, as many in this House recognise, she is right to say that a recognition of their amazing capability and the amazing people that they are does not transfer to the level of understanding that we need among our population about the issues with which our forces deal. We all have a duty and a responsibility to try to work on that and improve that understanding.
	My hon. Friend responded to a question from the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), who later raised the issue again, on women in close combat. We are reviewing the issue and we will do so without prejudice or precondition. The situation is not simple because there is no simple front line. We have women who are involved in logistical operations—supply lines and so on—in Afghanistan and they have effectively involved themselves in close combat, because they are obliged to do so. As we review this, we must take into account the complexities of the warfare that we are fighting and the fact that female members of our armed forces are, from time to time, in the thick of it, alongside their male counterparts. I do not think that we can have a politically correct situation on the one hand, or have prejudice on the other. We have to be objective as we undertake the review.
	The hon. Member for Colchester also raised the issue of the despicable literature—there is cross-party consensus in the House on its nature—from the British National party about Johnson Beharry, and I am glad that he did so. I am not free to sign his early-day motion, but if I was, I would rush to the Table Office to do so.